Battletech - Also known as Trannytech
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To me, misjumps are a very fascinating aspect of BT - and for that matter Traveller.
The jumpdrive in Traveller works somewhat similar to how it works in BT with one notable exception:
In order to jump, the ship creates a tiny pocket-universe which it jumps into, spends about a week there and then jumps back out into regular space. The amount of time it spends in this jumpspace will usually be roughly the same amount of time it will take to pop back out, but there's always a little give or take.
During a misjump, much like in BT, you might end up in the wrong place (which can also extend your jump by several order of magnitudes beyond what is usually possible in the game), but there are some really fascinating things that can happen with how long you're stuck in the jumpspace bubble.
It might be that you are only stuck there for a few hours (or even shorter) and pop back into existence, but 2 weeks went by in regular space. This can also be the other way around, where travel was instantanuous, but you were stuck in jumpspace for 2 weeks.
You can also be stuck in jumpspace for far longer than the regular time. There are reports of ships that were stuck in jumpspace for months (while the ship was gone from regular space for only a week or so). One such example mentions a ship registering the signature of a jump, but all that popped back into regular space was a quickly dissipating cloud of sub-atomic particles which would indicate that the ship spent trillions of years in jumpspace until even the matter it was made of broke down.
Once the ship is in Hyperspace, there is nothing you can do from within your ship, the jump will take however long it will take and it will end up whereever it will end up.
Another interesting aspect is the fact that the pocket-universe created to jump is literally a bubble inflated with hydrogen gas that extends only a few meters beyond the ship and getting close to the boundary will have terrible effects on the human body. Like it will mangle your limbs and make you go crazy, if you're getting too close. If you go a little closer, you will die a horrible death. Sometimes the bubble doesn't form correctly and will just cut off parts of the ship.
It might be that you are only stuck there for a few hours (or even shorter) and pop back into existence, but 2 weeks went by in regular space. This can also be the other way around, where travel was instantanuous, but you were stuck in jumpspace for 2 weeks.
You can also be stuck in jumpspace for far longer than the regular time. There are reports of ships that were stuck in jumpspace for months (while the ship was gone from regular space for only a week or so). One such example mentions a ship registering the signature of a jump, but all that popped back into regular space was a quickly dissipating cloud of sub-atomic particles which would indicate that the ship spent trillions of years in jumpspace until even the matter it was made of broke down.
Once the ship is in Hyperspace, there is nothing you can do from within your ship, the jump will take however long it will take and it will end up whereever it will end up.
Another interesting aspect is the fact that the pocket-universe created to jump is literally a bubble inflated with hydrogen gas that extends only a few meters beyond the ship and getting close to the boundary will have terrible effects on the human body. Like it will mangle your limbs and make you go crazy, if you're getting too close. If you go a little closer, you will die a horrible death. Sometimes the bubble doesn't form correctly and will just cut off parts of the ship.
As much as I like the K-F-Drive I think Traveller's way of doing FTL is more badass and has more interesting possibilities behind it.
If I was playing an RPG set in BT, I think I'd houserule a combination of BT and Traveller FTL rules.
As for ships misjumping in BT, that has some really interesting opportunities for the setting as well:
It gives you great opportunities for stuff like ghostships drifting through space or unknown colonies on faraway planets set up by survivors of a misjump.
I would not be surprised if in the setting of BT, there'd be countless stories of survivors of misjumps hunkering down on some remote planet, that send out an SOS via regular radio transmission and then hoping that the signal will be picked up in some other star system several lightyears away, so someone comes and picks them up, once the signal has travelled all that distance.
Something I wondered about: How much energy does a jump require and how much energy does a DropShip's reactor provide?
Like I imagine a JumpShip with a busted reactor, that is forced to tap into the reactors of the attached DropShips (maybe even the reactors of the vehicles and mechs aboard the Dropships) to slowly charge the K-F-Drive.
A Jumpship with giant solar sails and a massive reactor takes several days to charge, so daisychaining together everything vaguely fusion reactor shaped would most likely take forever to charge the drive, but the idea is still kinda interesting to me.
I think a flying cruise-ship-like Zeppelin would be in higher demand. Less shakey (additional seats in a mech are called rumble seats for a reason), they'd offer more luxury, a better view, better accomodations and carry more people (which in turn increases revenue).
But then again, there's gimmicky tourism stuff all over the world, so it's not like any of what you said is unfeasible, it's just highly specific to a very narrow range of customers.
In BT, the belle of the ball is the mech, but I'll be damned if I wouldn't love to play an Elite: Dangerous like game set in BT.
Or some space shooter with realistic, newtonian flight physics. BT offers such a rich and vibrant world, but some aspects are just not well explored when it comes to games (and I guess the audience for such games is too small to ever change this...).
Sure, zeppelins could work too. I'm sure people would take zeppelin tours if they could!
But I think my fellow Kiwis are really underestimating the value and demand that there would be for Mech tours.
It's a Mech. Mechs are inherently cool; they're so cool, that an entire franchise was built around them. They exist in a galaxy that has tanks, bombers, and orbital spaceships capable of glassing entire continents, yet despite all the practical problems with using Mechs (see the age-old debate, "Mechs vs Tanks"), they are still the undisputed kings of the battlefield. Everyone in the galaxy, Clan and Sphere, worships the ground they stomp on, but NOT everyone gets a chance to ride in one. Hence - tourism!
In fact, if anything, I might be thinking too conservatively here.
For example, in 3025, there's not going to be a market for soccer moms driving refurbished Locusts' around. That would be silly, obviously. But in the 3050s+, after the manufacturing boom, maybe instead of just catering to the elite, there'd even be a Karen market for leisure Battlearmor and Mechs? Especially on a manufacturing world with a robust upper-middle class: drive your kids to soccer practice, strapped to the rumbleseat on the back of your Cavalier Mk2. Be the toast of the golf course by pulling up to the valet in a Sport Utility Flea. I could even imagine things getting so bad that Space California has to pass ordinances against driving bright orange Urbanmechs within megacity limits:
"Urbanmechs are vehicles of war! They have no place on our streets."
"Yeah, but I want my kids to be safe!"
"Your kids, maybe, but look at the other guy's kids; 9 out of 10 Urbanmech crashes result in entire city blocks getting pulverized!"
- Highlight
- #1,764
Typical jump drive charging actually doesn't use the reactor at all. It can be done, and a hell of a lot faster at that, but "hot charging" the drive that way is known to risk damaging the drive.
In other news, having spent the last 2 days powering through Hour of the Wolf, here's a quick rundown of what's going on in the sphere:
The Wall is slated to go down no later than early 3153, unless Alaric decides to start scrapping his own ships for KF drives.
Jade Falcon is down to 120-odd warriors, plus sibkos and solahma. They have had a change of leadership, and are now sworn to the ilClan
Ghost Bear is being Ghost Bear, despite Delvin Stone's attempts to bait them into joining the boogaloo on Terra in a mad bid to unfuck his situation.
Snow Raven is planning to swear themselves to the ilClan, as soon as they receive certain assurances.
Hell's Horses are mad as fuck, and will probably roll on Terra.
The CapCon is poised to strike at Terra, and is possibly nearing figuring out how to circumvent the Wall.
The FedSuns are getting DP'd by Liao and Kurita, and in no position to do anything.
The Combine has yet to make any solid plans at this time.
The FWL are skittish about making sudden moves after how poorly the Jihad turned out for them.
The Lyrans are making cautious moves into Falcon territory, and may go on the full offensive once word of how things turned out gets to them.
Sea Fox is all but literally rubbing their hands and cackling about how much money they're going to make.
That would be interesting, but it would have to be a game very heavily based on both politics and logistics. It can't be one of those games where you can just amass a deathball of warships and roll over the enemy. You have to push a proper front or you'll be isolated and picked apart. And you'll need a whole "politics and sneaky shit" layer on top of everything. So many things in BattleTech happened because someone keeping or discovering the right secrets, after all.
So it would be a pretty micromanagement-heavy 4X. Which, given the kind of autist likes BT, should be fine.
As @A_Callow_Youth inferred, it's not so much an issue of energy (although it does take a lot of power to do charge a jump drive), but time. If you try to charge a jump drive too quickly, it'll be damaged. The sail is there as a fuel-efficiency measure instead. Most of the mass of a JumpShip's engine is actually dedicated to the stationkeeping drives and they carry very little fuel. Most don't even carry enough to be able to charge their own drive without the solar sail (warships often carry more, for obvious reasons). For example, an Invader massing 152,000 tons only carries 50 tons of hydrogen and burns off about 2 tons per day just holding position while it recharges. That's why shooting off (or diving through) the solar sail of a JumpShip is a favored tactic of both military and pirate aerospace pilots to keep their target from getting away.
Anyway... in your example, every single fusion reactor in the vicinity would run out of hydrogen long before they could charge the drive. Long story short: carry spare sails and thank the heavens for recharge stations.
FedSuns getting shafted? wtf I love the ilKhan Era now.
(Seriously, I'm fine with Davion fans and I like autocannons as much as the next guy, but the FedSuns have gotten by on their hero status way too often.)
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I kinda liked the idea of a stranded crew slapping together every source of energy they go in order to charge the FTL drive, but I never really contemplated the fuel consumption. A fusion reactor might be efficient as hell, but the amount of energy required seems to be even more vast then I imagined.
What is the operational range of a mech anyway? How often does he need to refuel? It never really gets mentioned in the novels and in the game, it's most likely never really relevant to keep track.
Fuel-wise? Technically unlimited. BattleMechs carry electrolysis plants that can be used to break up light water into fuel for the reactor. Even if you're stuck in a desert planet, the MechWarrior would be dead long before the 'Mech ran out of fuel, because...
(TechManual, p.35)
A 'Mech is much more likely to run out of lubricants for its joints before it runs out of fuel in the field. So, if the pilot was hopped up on enough amphetamines and had enough powerbars stuffed in the glove compartment, it's likely a well-maintained 'Mech on Planet Cueball could keep running for days on end.
I'd be surprised if there wasn't a Solaris mod for it.
How does the phrase "New Avalon has fallen" sit in your mouth?
Balr0g
kiwifarms.net
But the Combine has been kicked from other Fedsuns planets and from what I got is that they have a really strained hold in Fedsuns territory. And the Capellans also lost some of their Fedsuns gains. The question qould be if Julian the one-legged and Eric Sandoval an put a force together to somehow retake New Avalon.
Oh and from the soruce books I heard of there will be a Tamar rising event. Now that sounds promising a revolt within the old Clan OZ and possibly a huge chunk of territory returning to the Lyran fold.And alaric keeping the walls up until 3153? 3 years? And that is probably only a small part of Prefecture X (most likely Terra and some planets) Now imagine him trying to pacify Terra with whatever he has left and at the same time rebuilding his forces. Uh yeah good luck with that. Esepcially he might get D'os by angry Horses and Capellans
The Wall is down to Terra itself (probably to make it last longer), and the projection was 12-18 months as of May 3151. There was surprisingly little mention of partisan activity during the book, and that seems to be due to a few factors, including Alaric's "if you fuck with me, I will evacuate you and then burn your home to the ground" policy, Stone evacuating most cities as the Clans closed in, and the fact that Alaric saved them from Malvina "orbital bombard you into surrender and then shoot you anyway" Hazen. He's even gone out of his way to style his conquest not as the Clans invading, but as the return of the Star League, to the point where he has styled himself First Lord, claimed Unity City as his capital, and re-interred Alex Kerensky in Cameron Palace. As it stands, massive civilian uprising is his ball to drop.
Simtex Software did one called 'Mech Lords' back in the day.
They got sued for breach of copyright by FASA (oh the irony) then changed the title to 'Metal Lords'.
Apart from a really good looking print ad in 'Computer Gaming World' magazine I never saw anything come of it. It was never released.
Now, on to Battletech. First time I bought it it wouldn't boot up. I now have a new PC so I bought it in the Steam sale, have played 25 hours, and hoo boy, isn't it a doozy.
- Almost no 'white' character portraits.
- Pretty much every NPC of importance is a Strong Woman of Color (and the non-female ones are not white either).
- Every surname is something like Yang, Gutierrez, Chernovskaya, Murad- not a single Smith, Jones, Brown, Williams, O'Leary, or McDonald.
- Mission design is shit-tastic, expect to be some combo of outnumbered, outgunned and outweighed in pretty much every fight.
- Watch in amazement as a 20T Commando soaks up four or five rounds of focused firepower from your whole lance while his lancemates disassemble your team in return.
- You're pretty much guaranteed to miss 20-30% of your shots regardless of what the numbers say, while the enemy might miss maybe 1 in 10.
- 'Hard Point' system hamstringing 'Mech customization (why the fuck does the Shadow Hawk have a left arm if you can't mount any weapons on it?).
- Ridiculous loading times.
- Random events that pop up with idiocy like 'you have 1.2 mill c-bills and a 300k bill on the way. Would you like to piss off your techs, lose 500k or lose a million?'.
- 'Training' mission where you accompany three rookies in Urbies and other useless shitboxes as vastly superior forces intercept you.
- 'Destroy that convoy, they have a Shreck PPC carrier so be careful' (destroys convoy successfully, no Shreck to be found).
- Save scumming absolutely vital- bring a mech with the wrong weapon fit and you're fucked (no we won't tell you what might suit the mission).
What I really like is that in their drive to be inclusive, they built their world with a very unfortunate implication.
The Periphery is poor and backwards compared to the Inner Sphere. And they populated the Periphery entirely with brown people. It's like they're saying brown people must be poor and backwards otherwise they wouldn't be in the ass-end of colonized space.
Which is the stupidest shit ever. BattleTech does not subscribe to the "the future is brown" view of demographics, because most planets were colonized by very specific groups of people and large populational shifts and immigration/refugee waves are very hard to pull off because interstellar travel isn't a trivial affair. You are actually very likely to see planets with very well-defined ethnic majorities (white, brown, black, yellow, purple, green, or any other color), even if the names are all over the place. You might very well see a black guy with a Japanese name and not bat an eyelash at it. Hell, you might just as well see an entire planet of black people with Japanese names and not be too surprised either. But nope, instead of throwing us a fun curveball like a Chinese-looking guy named McLeod, they just go full-blown stereotypical with everybody.
Waste of potential.
Yeah I noticed that Kurita was noted as being 'multiracial but monocultural' and all I could think was "that's what EVERY FUCKING NATIONALIST wants out of a multicultural society!".
It's a fascist's wet dream that if you must have every color of the rainbow in your nation that they should work together for the nation, not against each other for their tribes.
Hell, the fasces are about exactly that, FFS.
So this is obviously a weeaboo designer saying 'it's the Japanese thing to do so it's awww right' without considering what they were really saying.
No, it's just that nobody understands what Fascism is, because everybody uses Fascism as a fancy way of saying National Socialism.
Oh, no. Don't worry. This is all on HBS's plate.
In the source material, the Periphery has just about the same ethnic makeup as the rest of the Inner Sphere, because it was colonized essentially the same way as everywhere else, the ships just took longer to get there and they weren't incorporated into large empires early on, which stunted their development as colonies. Their stereotype is cultural and technological: everybody in the Inner Sphere thinks they're all a bunch of fuckwits.
And, in fairness, outside of the major Periphery powers, into the Deep Periphery, that's more or less what you see. But they're a diverse bunch of fuckwits spanning a wide gamut of skin hues. The Calderon family, for example, have always been depicted as generically white. The Centrellas, on the other hand, were always some more "exotic" shade, varying from light brown to a more Caribbean-looking black. This whole "homogenous non-white" look for the Periphery is Harebrained Schemes' idea of trying to make the Periphery look "unique", while at the same time making it look more boring instead.
Also, the Periphery is just not the same without its white trash rednecks. Just saying.
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@RomanesEuntDomus Since you were talking about attached dropships and the like: https://www.sarna.net/wiki/Lucretia
Heavily implied the drive needs so much energy and/or cooling afterwards it needs two dropships and the L-F Battery to make them happen.
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Heavily implied the drive needs so much energy and/or cooling afterwards it needs two dropships and the L-F Battery to make them happen.
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Fronc Reaches. Marshalls, vaguely Confederate flag...
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Balr0g
kiwifarms.net
Honestly the part with the McKena's Pride is something I simply can't believe. Send a team back into Clan space to steal a battleship that is THE fixture of Strana Mechty and right after the Wars of Reaving. Especially since the Diamond Sharks / Sea Foxes did send agents / recovery teams before the Wolves did and only the recovery team returned with a badly damaged Potemkin while the spy teams stopped sending reports in the early 3080's ( think that was it)
And one funny note about the Periphery: before the Reunification war the Taurian Concordat was the second mot developed space nation. Only the Hegemony was more sophisticated. The wars wrecked most nations (with the exception of the Magistracy)
And second note: it was the Periphery nations that wrecked the Star League in return centuries later due to their own stupidity. Heck when Kerensky left to wreck the Republic and the Hegemony they had to deal with the same terrorists they had raised. Now why does this sound so familiar? So if HBS is going with "brown people are poor" then we should add "Brown people are simply stupid and easy to manipulate" Heck the Magistracy allied with the Confederation because Sun Tzu pulled some manipulation tricks out of his sleeves. The Chinese take advantage of the "brown people" Also a nod to our times.
Jesus fucking christ, can I just add:
-Destroy this lightly guarded convoy anon
-It's lightly guarded, only one lance
-If you go flat out sprint you might be able to get to a decent ambush point before the convoy escapes
-Did I say only 1 lance? I meant 2 lances
-Oh by the way when you've destroyed 2/3 of the vehicles we'll spawn another lance in right behind you
-As in right in your back arc
-Panther, Trebuchet and 2x Javelins
-While all their friends are still pounding you from the front
This shit isn't even close to reasonable balance. They have 50% more tonnage spread across three times the number of mechs. Ridiculous.
-Destroy this lightly guarded convoy anon
-It's lightly guarded, only one lance
-If you go flat out sprint you might be able to get to a decent ambush point before the convoy escapes
-Did I say only 1 lance? I meant 2 lances
-Oh by the way when you've destroyed 2/3 of the vehicles we'll spawn another lance in right behind you
-As in right in your back arc
-Panther, Trebuchet and 2x Javelins
-While all their friends are still pounding you from the front
This shit isn't even close to reasonable balance. They have 50% more tonnage spread across three times the number of mechs. Ridiculous.
StevieLasVegas
kiwifarms.net
Know that feeling. There's one mission you have to really careful of that goes something like this (going off memory, but it was bad enough to remember)
Oh, and this wasn't a RogueTech mission. This was a baseline game mission. As in I only had 4 mechs to manage against 4 lances. I didn't play the game for a while after this. That mission what bullshit for the sake of being bullshit. I only attempted it because the payout was marginally better compared to the other missions available and I was having an alright time dealing with 2 star missions.
- Send your lance to location X to so the employers can infiltrate & extract... something. I think I was working for Canopus, so as far as I know, its a new kind of drug that gets your dick hard and your mind fucked up.
- Get in close enough in range to see enemy lance is three mechs; a light, a medium, and a heavy (usually a Thunderbolt). You only have medium mechs.
- Light & medium enemy close enough for you to deal with, but heavy is LRM spamming you.
- Kill light & medium baddie, get close to the heavy and it spawns an additional 4 medium lance on the only route your mechs without jump jets can travel through. I had 2 who had to foot slog.
- Manage to core heavy, so you send another mech to help the foot sloggers as they're getting their shit pushed in and getting weapons/legs blown off.
- Single mech goes to base alone and captures it, only for it to become a extract convey mission now. Expects bullshit ahead and sends the one foot slogger with both legs over to help convoy. Other two mechs are managing the lance thankfully.
- Expected bullshit happens. New enemy lance dead ahead. Two light mechs and two vehicles. My mechs tailing the convoy can handle it, but expect convoy to be useless.
- Convoy is useless. Spreads all its damage out instead of focusing on whatever is closest. Manage to get my two mechs in to stomp enemy vehicles. Enemy light mechs do the old run & gun
- My other two mechs manage to kill the second lance. One is hurt bad with 50% mobility and half its weapons gone. Sending to help kill remaining light mechs.
- Enemy mechs kill two of the convoy vehicles before you kill them. Start following convoy to extraction point, thankful it's over.
- Lol, it's not over. The extraction point was just for the convoy. You have to go to another one just further down the road. Guess what? Game decides to spawn another enemy lance, this time 2 lights and 2 Crabs because why the fuck not.
Oh, and this wasn't a RogueTech mission. This was a baseline game mission. As in I only had 4 mechs to manage against 4 lances. I didn't play the game for a while after this. That mission what bullshit for the sake of being bullshit. I only attempted it because the payout was marginally better compared to the other missions available and I was having an alright time dealing with 2 star missions.
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